Benediction - Patrick Sean Lee (classic book list txt) 📗

     April came and went, and everyone in the neighborhood was still alive, except Frank. It was May 4th, I recall, another Saturday. Benediction night. My mother wouldn’t miss it for the world.
     Mass on Sundays was obligatory, but the Saturday evening Benediction service up at Presentation of Our Lady Catholic Church was considered to be something like volunteering for a dangerous mission. Extra credit in the fight to position oneself in the hierarchy of the saved. I was informed late in the afternoon that I would be attending along with her and Pop this week, despite my lengthy and useless explanation that my soul was saved enough, and therefore I wouldn’t need to go. 

“Well, it don’t matter a bit what you think, smartalek. You’re goin’. I’ll go and ask Margaret if Jimmy can come along. He can keep you company. He needs a little extra prayin’ for, prob’ly worse than you. Do you both good,” she answered me. Ten minutes later she returned with the good news that his mom absolutely agreed with her. I know I heard shouting and crying coming through the walls of his brick house next door, but I was thankful anyway that I’d have him beside me to help me endure the numbing, two hour-long service.
     So Jimmy was forced by his mother to ride along with my parents and me in the back of Pop’s old truck to the church three miles away for the most boring two hours of our lives.
     Mrs. McGuire, of course, was busy with a certain Mr. Old Harper, so she wouldn’t be able to join us, but she’d made sure Jimmy washed his hands and face, and put on a pair of clean jeans without holes in the knees before he left.
     “There. You look real good, Jim,” she’d said as he and I stood side by side staring at the mirror in the bathroom at his house. In the reflection I could see Mrs. McGuire clearly. Her hands were shaking, her hair was a mess, and her eyes were lost in a red-lined vacuum, but she had Jimmy trapped securely between her nightgown and the edge of the sink. He was going to go to Benediction, like it or not, maybe say a prayer or two for her, and that was that.

“I don’t wanna’ go,” he said as she raked down the last shock of his unruly hair for the umpteenth time.
    “Well, you’re goin’ anyway,” she informed him. “Verne and Rosie was nice enough to invite you. You behave yourself, now.”
     That, I discovered in another hour or so, he had no intention of doing.
     Having finished plastering down his hair, Mrs. McGuire returned to her discussion with Mr. Harper, and Jimmy ran into his bedroom. He reappeared in a flash, stuffing something into his rear pocket. A handkerchief, I imagined. We left his house, hopped the fence, and then ambled to my front porch to wait for Mom's and Pop’s appearance. It was a little after seven and getting dark.
     “Let’s just run away,” I said mournfully as we sat there. “I don’t know if I can stand sittin’ there for two hours smelling that incense crap burnin’, and pretendin’ to pray on a PERFECTLY GOOD SATURDAY NIGHT!“
     “Aw, it won’t be so bad,” he said with a grin. “I got a plan.”
     “Whatdya’ mean?” I asked.
     “Well, we gotta’ somehow get away from your folks after we get there. After that…you’ll see.”
     I didn’t really like the sound of that answer, but on the other hand, anything he could dream up was bound to be better than sitting glued to the pew, counting the colors in the stained glass windows, and smelling the farts of the old folks in front of us. I left myself open to his unannounced idea.
     The front door behind us opened inward with a creak, announcing Mom and Pop’s intention to be on with the holy program. They stepped outside, and I immediately caught the scent of O’ de Old Lady, as powerful as the stench of the stockyards north of the city. I turned to see Mom, her black hair brushed to Donna Reed perfection, red rouge slathered roughly over the white skin of her cheeks, and shockingly loud, red lipstick smeared onto her lips. She carried a Missal in her left hand, and the look of it all was one of absolute spiritual single-mindedness. We were going to intercede on behalf of someone’s soul tonight. Maybe that of my flaming Uncle John, out in San Francisco.
     “Okay, boys, go jump into the back end,” Mom announced as she adjusted her girdle with her free hand. She hesitated a second or two, waiting for my dad to yank the front door closed, then she clopped across the wooden planks of the porch to the steps where Jimmy and I remained stubbornly seated.
     “Come on, come on! We’ll be late. LaVerne, tell these boys to get up right this minute.”
     I couldn’t tell whether Pop was as eager to be off to church as Mom—I don’t think he was—but he obeyed.  “Let’s go,” he said.

     We arrived at church and pulled into the parking lot across the street, which served as the playground during the day when school was in session.
     Pop positioned the truck near the entrance. If everything worked out according to plan, the savvier men of the congregation would race back out before the mad-exit rush started, and return home to catch the last fifteen minutes of the Saturday Night Fights.
    The four of us left the truck, and, led by Mom single file, we crossed the street and walked up the national monument-sized flight of concrete steps leading to the entrance of God’s official residence in West Denver. Once the doors were opened, Jimmy and I flew past her, heading for another flight of stairs leading up to the choir loft that offered a panoramic view of the fifty rows of pews and the sanctuary beyond.
     “Oh, no ya’ don’t! Where do you two think you’re off to?” I heard Mom ask in a half-shout, half-whisper just as we reached the first step.
     “Upstairs. We want to see who’s here,” I answered.
     “Uh-uh. You boys stay right here with us.”
     “We’ll behave, Mom. Soon as we check it out we’ll come right back down,” I said, and continued on as though we really would rejoin her and Pop before whatever Jimmy had planned got the better of us. I could hear her chattering to Pop, something or other about her wanting him to go get us, but I knew that wouldn’t happen. The last thing I heard before we hit the stairway landing was part of Pop’s reply. “Goddamit, Rosie, leave ‘em be. What kind of trouble can they get into…” He said that in a growling whisper, as though standing in the vestibule and turning his head away from the sanctuary, Jesus, who might still be asleep, wouldn’t hear His name being used in vain.
     Jimmy and I continued up to the choir loft. The floor was dominated by a massive organ, which, when cranked up and played by an accomplished organist, never failed to wake up anyone snoring in the congregation. It was an awesome instrument, a fascinating work of art even when it sat silent. I could never figure out just by looking at it how someone, usually a teeney-tiny nun like Sister Mary Carmelita, with only two hands and two feet, could sail the ocean of keyboards set in row after row on it’s semicircular face. Not to mention pounding the seeming hundreds of pedals at its base. Sister looked like a wild woman sitting on a sheet of molten metal whenever the otherwise quiet old nun cranked out a fugue on it.
     Jimmy darted to the parapet wall near the top landing. I ran lickedy-split, and parked on the opposite side of the organ. We looked down. Save my mom and dad, the church was still nearly empty. An elderly lady and a man sat, heads bowed down, about midway between the sanctuary and the loft wall. Mom was kneeling in her pew across the aisle from them, looking over her shoulder and glaring up at us, mouthing something that I’m sure contained words on the Catholic “condemned” list that she’d later need to confess. Pop seemed disinterested, scratching at his thinning hair, looking straight ahead at who knows what. I smiled and waved at Mom, which prompted her to get up and take a step in our direction, but then she stopped. She was beside herself, I knew, and after leering up at Jimmy and me for another minute or so, she shook her index finger at us, and then turned to join Pop—most likely inform him that we were up to no good.
     I rejoined Jimmy on the other side of the organ. We watched as families entered and took their seats after genuflecting and making the sign of the cross. We crawled across the organ seat, watched as more parishioners padded in, returned to our original starting point. Giggled, poked at one another, glanced down now and again to see my mom looking up at us with a scowl, and more forbidden words. This went on until the church filled up, and an altar boy dressed in a black cassock and white surplice came out of the sacristy door, carrying his long, brass candle lighter. It was Extine Moye, the brother of Lee Moye—the only two black kids in our school. Coach Dweedle called him “Snowball”, I guess because his skin was midnight ebony. Though the tag made all the kids laugh, I felt sorry for X because he’d always drop his head, as though the color of his skin was shameful. With a name like Dweedle, and skin the color of white puke, Coach shouldna’ been poking fun at anyone. He certainly held his tongue whenever Mr. Moye, a soft featured, perfectly mannered giant of a Negro man, was around. Though I never saw the gentle man raise his voice, or in any way act angry, Pop told me he’d once been a professional heavyweight fighter, and a really good one at that. Something mysterious happened, though, around the time Extine was born in 1946, Pop had said, and Mr. Moye abruptly quit the game. Simply looking up at him, I was in no doubt that if he wanted to he could cut down the likes of even Rocky Marciano. Lucky thing for Dweedle that he kept his fat mouth shut in Mr. Moye’s presence.
     X began the solemn routine of lighting all the candles on the altar, set in their elaborate, shining-brass holders. Finishing that, he bowed to the monstrance sitting in front of the ornate tabernacle, and then turned to light the remaining candles in the sanctuary. His brilliant-white eyes caught Jimmy’s and mine far away in the loft, and he smiled. We waved down to him and made faces, and that caused the poor kid to begin giggling and nearly drop the lighter. One after another, the congregation followed his upward glancing face to the choir loft. Sensing that we’d be spotted by every eye in the crowd, Jimmy and I plonked down onto our butts, covered our mouths, and laughed some more.
     We sat shoulder to shoulder for a bit, and then I poked my face over the loft wall just in time to see Father Matthias Blenker and the altar boys entering the sanctuary from the sacristy. Extine followed immediately behind